to help us to understand and deconstruct capitalism in order to create a sustainable and peaceful social system.

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, March 17, 2016

“For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa”

Ruccio explains with hard economic evidence that capitalist operations result in most of the wealth produced by American workers has caused the American worker to become poorer and poorer while the "owners" become ever richer by exploiting cheaper labor worldwide. Wealth produced by workers ends up concentrated in the hands of a small segment of society.

...capitalism means that capitalists get to appropriate the surplus and do with it what they want. They get to decide when and where commodities will be produced, and therefore when and where jobs will or will not be created. If that means offshoring production or purchasing inputs from producers in other countries in order to boost profits, they’ll do so. And workers in the United States will either lose their jobs or be forced to accept lower wages and fewer benefits in order to “compete” with the production of commodities elsewhere.

Thus an economy, which is a vital part of every society, ends up under capitalism serving the needs of only a tiny segment or class of each society while producing many undesirable effects such as unemployment, poverty, devastating wars, etc. for the vast majority of people.